Chapter Three: Where the Roots Remember
The wind moaned like an half-forgotten cradle song between the trees of the forest. It held a gravity absent from the open plains, an ancient tongue that lay suspended between every leaf and every petal. The Blooming Forest was not an ordinary realm—and Kael Azrion sensed it in every step.
It breathed.
He followed Lira down a twisted road lined with bioluminescent moss and hanging flowers that glowed blue when they were touched by air. Cathedral-vaulted trees leaped overhead, their bark smeared with resin that reflected starlight. Vines crawled and moved whenever one did not watch them.
Lira walked as if born to this land. Her braided hair rippled gently as she guided him on, bells in her hair providing a sweet counterpoint to the whispering woods. Behind them came the remainder of the pilgrimage: a dozen figures draped in leaf-dyed linen, each with satchels or staffs fashioned from the bones of the woods.
Kael kept his hands to himself.
The air had shifted the instant they stepped in. The valley's peace was lost, replaced by something more profound—something that observed. He felt it on his skin. Not the Eye here.
The forest itself.
"How far until we come to the Heartgrove?" he said to Lira quietly.
She didn't glance back. "A few hours' journey yet. Perhaps less, if it doesn't shift."
He blinked. "If it doesn't… shift?"
She smiled back over her shoulder. "It's alive, Kael. It decides where it wants to be."
Of course it does.
His Miracle Eye glowed softly under the lid, flooding him with filaments of invisible detail: how pollen drifted in deliberate spirals, the potential mana that lashed roots together under the earth, the earth's own distant pulse like a sleeping deity. Every detail of this world was deliberate. Not enchanted—conscious.
Lira slowed alongside a tree whose trunk had divided into three arms, creating a natural gate. She faced the group.
"We rest here tonight," she said. "The grove sleeps nearby."
The others silently complied. Cloths were spread, fires teased from dry coils of vine that flared without smoke. Kael stayed by the tree. Its bark carried markings—symbols not carved, but grown—twisting script that looped into eyes, hands, and stars.
He reached out and touched it.
*Flash.*
Pain stabbed through his skull. Visions erupted behind his eyes—this very glade, but centuries in the past. Children laughing in robes of green, seniors planting crystal-seeds into the ground, a tower of trees reaching high before shattering into flame.
And standing at the heart of it—himself.
Not as he was at present. As something else. Wearing black and gold, eyes blazing with fury. Flame licking from his fingers. Cries.
Kael took a step back.
Lira steadied him. "Kael?"
"I saw…" he rubbed his head. "A vision. From the tree."
She regarded him strangely. "The memorybark only reveals to those the forest favors."
"Then it has a wicked way of showing favor."
Lira assisted him in sitting next to a small fire. "Trees' visions are fragments of the truth," she told him softly. "Not the whole of it. The forest remembers—but it doesn't always know."
Kael did not answer.
He gazed into the fire. It danced with color in his Miracle Eye beyond nature's vision. Green translated into voices. Orange to sorrow.
And he questioned:
Was it a memory at all?
Or a warning?
—
Sleep did not come easily that night. Kael lay under the stars, his body at rest but his heart drawn taut. He listened for the whispering once more—soft, rhythmical, like wind in reeds yet formed into words.
*"You were here."*
*"You shattered what could not be repaired."*
*"Why do you take his form?"*
He sat up.
Roots curled over his arms, not close, but on purpose. They encircled him—not to bind, but to acknowledge. Symbols flickered weakly under his skin, burning like scars into being. His Miracle Eye burst wide in darkness.
*And the forest looked upon him.*
Not the man he had been. The *being* that he had become.
He leaned towards the roots—and they flinched back.
---
By dawn, the rest had already set out. Only Lira remained close to his bedroll, a mug of steamed leaf-brew clutched in her hand. She held it out silently.
He accepted it. drank.
"Thanks," he muttered.
Lira observed him. "You trod the dream-roots."
Kael nodded.
"What did they reveal to you?"
He hesitated. "A fire. Me. burning something that wasn't mine to burn."
Lira did not respond, merely gazed out toward the canopy. "Not everyone with power gets to decide how it touches the world."
She locked eyes with him again. "But the forest still allowed you passage. That is something."
Kael wasn't certain if that reassured him or frightened him further.
—
They moved further into their journey.
The air shifted once more—denser this time, scented with the sweet aroma of blooming memoryflowers that wound open as they moved by. Some whispered in languages long past. Others wept golden sap. The trees towered upward, becoming odder—some with bark resembling flesh, some with crystalline fruit that thrummed.
Kael's Eye filled him with information incessantly:
> Warning: temporal distortion field present.
> Type of flora: Chronoshade Elm.
> Memory loop recognized—anchor mind.
He stretched out and grasped Lira's shoulder as the world tilted briefly sideways. They traveled in a loop, redoing a patch of woods until they burst through with purpose. A natural barrier. One that wasn't meant to lie—but to try.
The Circle went through. Unharmed. But not the same.
They arrived at the Heartgrove by nightfall.
It was not a location. It was a creature.
A tree stood at the center of a glade so quiet even wind dared not disrupt. Its bark was white-gold, etched with spirals of silver. Roots stretched out like veins across a shining mirror-pool, and from its upper limbs hung thousands of hollow fruits, each radiating scenes within—memories trapped in amber light.
Kael moved closer, breath held.
His Eye blazed.
He saw it all.
Not the tree—but *what was beneath.* An enormous mind twisted through root systems that stretched across nations. Not awake, per se. But aware. Protective. It *watched.*
And it knew him.
One of the fruits glimmered dark.
Inside it—a memory different from the others.
A city. Towers of stone shattering. A child crying out. A knife of light piercing sky.
And him. Always him. Watching. Doing nothing.
"Don't," Lira said, catching his arm.
Kael turned.
Her eyes widened. "That fruit was sealed. Only a Lifekeeper may touch it."
"Then why is it presenting itself to me?"
She said nothing.
In their place, behind them, a voice whispered:
"Because the forest sees what he is."
Eldra Venn stepped out from the treeline, her knotted staff pacing rhythm into the earth. Her eyes—swathed with white—glared at Kael as if he were a dead man who did not yet know it.
"He bears a dead man's face," she spoke.
Kael didn't stir.
Eldra held her staff aloft. "You believe we didn't notice the portents? The Eye? The trees whisper his name. A name that was burned out of the Archives. "Azrion".
The Circle shifted uneasily.
Lira placed herself between Kael and the old woman. "You don't know what you're saying."
"I *know* what I see," Eldra spat. "He's a leftover. A curse in the flesh. The forest tells us what *he* did here once. This is no redemption. This is a return."
Kael's jaw clenched.
"I don't recall being here. I don't recall laying waste. But perhaps I did." His voice grew low, iron behind velvet. "The Eye doesn't lie."
Lira watched him. "Do you think you're him? The one from the memories?"
I think I bear the burden of something… old." His eyes moved towards the Heartgrove. "And it's not finished with me yet."
The silence was heavy.
Then the tree throbbed.
Not savagely. Not even loudly. But in a sound that pierced all thought: the breath of *recognition*.
One of the radiating fruits *burst*.
Amber light poured out, bathing the Circle in a ring of history.
In the fruit, the memory unfolded.
Younger Kael—years older than the body but younger in spirit—stood by the lip of a crater, robes drenched in ash. Behind him, a city was on fire. A forest, this forest, cried silently as its spirit-roots died. A sword shone in his hand—snakelike. No anger on his face.
Just sorrow.
Then the vision disappeared.
No one said anything.
Eldra let her staff fall. "He… he destroyed us."
Kael moved forward. "No. *He* did. I'm not him. Not anymore."
"How do you know?" Lira asked, not ungraciously.
He gazed at her.
"I don't."
—
That evening, they didn't camp. They went back to the meadow outside the grove, not wanting to sleep under a tree that bled memory. The Circle gave Kael his space. Even Lira, although she hung around, was silent.
Kael sat by himself at the periphery of the light.
His hands quivered slightly. Not with terror.
With self-control.
For the Eye presented him *another* vision now—just on the border of sight.
Not a memory. A prophecy.
Himself. Standing upon a corpse of a world.
Golden fire spilling from both eyes.
And above him—always—an Eye.
Watching. Waiting.
He breathed into darkness.
"Why was I revived?"
And the forest murmured in response:
> "Because the wound was never sewn."